Paul Raymond’s contribution to Soho is to be put up in lights. A development of sordid Walkers Court in the heart of Soho will feature a Raymond Revuebar sign — a glowing tribute, if you like, to the man who died in 2008, aged 82. It will be erected on the spot where the “King of Soho” began to build his £320 million Soho Estates property empire in the 1950s.

Plans for the £45 million Walkers Court development will be submitted in July. Soho Estates wants to move its headquarters into the top two floors of the six-storey development, which will also house a restaurant and a 150-seat cabaret theatre. “We don’t want to sanitise Soho,” says John James, Raymond’s son-in-law and long-time managing director of Soho Estates. “We want it to be edgy, not sleazy.

“Walkers Court will see the replacement of all the unlicensed sex industry uses,” James adds. “To change an area, you’ve got to change the footfall. To change the footfall, you’ve got to give people a different reason to go there. The project will open up the route from Oxford Street in the north, down to Shaftesbury Avenue and see increased footfall.”

An application for the 50,000 sq ft development will be made to Westminster Council in July. An exhibition of the plans was held last week. James says far bigger plans to redevelop a one-acre site once containing Foyles bookshop and some surrounding buildings “are progressing”. Will that see the north-west corner of Soho sanitised?

“We want to keep Soho’s soul,” says James, whose company is now held in trust for Raymond’s granddaughters, Fawn and India Rose, pictured. “We have always favoured new enterprise business over High Street covenants. This is how Soho has developed over the years, and we intend to carry on with this policy.”

Roughly translated, that means Boots, M&S and WH Smith will be banned.